I’ve written recently about my interest in vintage lenses and how much I’ve enjoyed using them. It’s very rare that I use my modern Fuji lenses these days. So, having convinced myself that using vintage lenses is not just a passing fad I decided to enhance my use of them by investing in a full frame camera.
Whilst my Fuji X-T5 works perfectly well with my old lenses the cameras crop sensor makes every lens work at a longer focal length than it was originally designed to be. So, my 50mm lenses become more like 75mm lens on the Fuji camera. I really wanted to start using these old lenses at their original focal lengths and to do that I needed a full frame camera.
My choice of which full frame camera came down to what I’d read on vintage lens blogs and picked up from vintage lens YouTube videos. Another consideration was that I was going to buy a used model and the A7 was selling on the used camera sites at a great price considering its spec. I also have a Sony RX100 which I really like so I was familiar with the brand.
After searching around for a few weeks I found a suitable camera on MBP. It had a really low shutter count and was advertised as like new. The camera arrived, last week as advertised, it looked like it had never been used.
It’s early days with my new acquisition but so far I’ve been really impressed. It’s really nice going back to the world of full frame. My Canon 5D’s were full frame and I loved those cameras. I’ve recently been busy at home replacing our wooden garden deck so I’ve had to grab any fine weather days to get on with that. However that’s now pretty well finished so I managed to go out this afternoon with the new camera.
The most obvious improvement, other than I’m now shooting full frame, is that the peak focusing feature on the Sony is a big improvement over the X-T5. This allows me to focus these old manual lenses far easier with the A7.
I’m hoping to get out and about a bit more with the camera over the next week or so. Perhaps I will but the long range forcast is for a dull, overcast week in our part of the UK. I’ll pen another blog on how things are working out with the new camera sometime in the near future.
All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.
Steve Hyde 